Huxley – Evolution
The UK tech house mainstay invites us into the studio to show us how he created his new single for Knee Deep In Sound
Tech house titan Huxley aka Michael Dodman is one of the scene’s stalwarts with releases on a slew of legendary labels such as Rinse, Defected and Aus Music. We caught up with him in his Brighton studio to find out how he created the techno-tinged and emotionally-charged Evolution.
Evolution is due imminently on Hot Since 82’s Knee Deep In Sound. How did the release come about?
“Daley and I have known each together for years, I first met him when we crossed paths at Be-At TV when he was doing one of their live podcast things, and we saw each other around at festivals and stuff. Then he started the label and we always talked about doing something. I did a track for him on a various artists release but at that point nothing else really fit his label well enough. Then as soon as I made Evolution I reached out to Daley straight away, I thought it would be his thing and luckily it was. The other track,
Weirdest Green, was actually something I’d made ages ago and then just kind of didn’t know what to do with. So I took a punt and sent it over to him and he liked that as well. It kind of fit into place quite nicely.”
There wasn’t a lot of back and forth between you while you were making it then?
“There were no changes actually, I know he can be quite vocal on changes but thankfully he was quite pleased with both of them how they were! I think he’s been playing them quite a lot, one of the reasons I sent them to him was that I’d recently listened to a set of his and I thought it was probably going to fit quite well with what he’s playing.”
You say in the video that you wanted to take a more musical approach with this track.
“Yeah, I’d been getting bored of just writing ‘track-y’ dancefloor records – I’ve been playing a lot of that and obviously it works so
well in the current climate. But I try to remember that I got into this not to make records that are just dancefloor bangers but also have a bit of personality and emotion in them.
“Evolution was my foray back into that vibe of writing a record that you can play peak time or whatever, but it also has that thing that can tug on the heartstrings hopefully, or at least elicit some kind of emotional response. I wanted to make sure that it was a record that will hopefully stand the test of time, so it has a lot of classic sounds with the strings, piano and then that marching, rolling bassline.”
It sounds almost Detroit-y...
“Yeah I suppose that’s true! It’s kind of my twist on it. I’ve never really thought about it like that but definitely the lower elements and the bass and the kick, and even with the keys I suppose it’s quite Detroit-y actually. It’s just my take on it really, I’m not very good at imitating or trying to copy other people. Not that I really do it, but I’ve tried to in the past. Whenever I sit down and write, it just kind of comes out the way it comes out, even if I put a lot of thought into it. With this I wanted the musical element, which I got, but it grew into Evolution during the session. I didn’t really know the end of the tune before I made it.”
“Evolution was my foray back into that vibe of writing a record that you can play at peak time or whatever, but it also has that thing that can tug on the heartstrings hopefully – or at least elicit some kind of emotional response.”
You talk about making emotional music, but it doesn’t feel like dance music is going in that direction. You’d think more producers would be trying to create Spotify-friendly ‘listening’ music
“I completely agree. With the public that’s how they consume music, they want the shorter versions which you have to do for most releases for Spotify, and they want to connect on an emotional level with the track. A lot of producers aren’t really doing that, but then also a lot of people who are going to raves now are obviously a lot younger and possibly consume music in a slightly different way than people of our age! Especially with the tech house scene, in my opinion it’s getting a bit dull, samey and generic. I think people need to start thinking outside the box and finding their own place rather than just trying to fill the shoes of someone else.”
So is there going to be an edit of Evolution for Spotify?
“I haven’t actually done it yet but there will be! I’m thinking about how to approach it... normally I just clip them up and radio edit them, but it might be more interesting to actually do a fully-fledged version which is a bit more interesting because you could have a bit more progression on the strings and even pull it out of the dancefloor world. I don’t know yet, I need to get on it!”